Competition for a coveted spot in the University of California will be fierce again next year, as freshman applications rose to record highs at every campus, according to data released by the university on Monday.

More than 171,400 students, including 111,611 Californians, applied to at least one UC campus. And, for the first time, freshman hopefuls at one campus — UCLA — topped six figures, to 102,177.

For this school year, with about 5,000 fewer applicants, only about 16,000 freshmen got were accepted to UCLA, the system’s most popular campus.

“This year’s applications affirm, once again, that Californians’ demand for a UC education keeps getting stronger,” UC President Janet Napolitano said in a statement.

Freshman applications at four schools — Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego and Irvine — topped 85,000. With a single application, a student can apply to multiple UC campuses. The numbers are likely to add up to a nerve-wracking college-admission season when offers arrive in March.

“I know students who won’t open their emails until they’re surrounded by their family and friends because they’re so nervous about what they’re going to say,” said Diane Dodge, executive director of the East Bay College Fund, which helps low-income and first-generation students apply to — and pay for — college.

Faced with growing demand and increasing political pressure to accept more Californians, UC last year agreed to add a total of 10,000 new seats, including 5,000 in the current school year, for California students by the fall of 2018. But UC added 7,500 new in-state undergraduate spots for the current academic year because more students accepted their offers than expected.

After tuition hikes for out-of-state and international students, applications actually dropped by more than 1,000 students this year. In-state applicants, however, rose by 6 percent, as their tuition has remained steady since 2011.

Latinos — the largest ethnic group among the state’s high school seniors — made up 37.2 percent of the in-state applicants, an increase of more than a percentage point from last year. Applications among black, Native American and Pacific Islander students remained flat, and white and Asian students made up a slightly smaller proportion of the applicant pool, according to UC.

More than 42 percent of the applicants are from low-income families, UC reported, and nearly 47 percent would be the first in their families to graduate from a 4-year college.

That was welcome news, Dodge said, adding: “I’ll be looking forward to how many of those students they accept.”

The demand “reinforces the imperative to continue working with our state government to preserve UC’s quality and affordability,” Napolitano said, “and to ensure there is a place at the university for every deserving California student.”

Katy Murphy is based in Sacramento and covers state government for The Mercury News and East Bay Times, a beat she took on in January 2017. Before that, she was the news organization's higher education reporter, writing about UC, CSU, community colleges and private colleges. Long ago, she covered Oakland schools and other K-12 education issues.